Plan International targets girls’ education in E. Equatoria

Plan International’s state coordinator, Graham Juma, speaks at the launch of an advocacy campaign targeting girls’ education in Eastern Equatoria’s Magwi county (ST)

The campaign was launched in order to boost public awareness and encourage better access for girls to education and skills training.

Plan’s state coordinator Graham Juma said the campaign aims to improve opportunities for vulnerable girls to move beyond poverty and realise their true potential.

Advocacy efforts will seek to target prevailing cultural attitudes that undervalue girls by promoting investment in their future through education.

The campaign also aims to eliminate factors that affect access to education for girl children and contribute to mass dropout rates.

The gender advisor for Plan International, Angelina Alaa, said the organisation’s efforts would be geared towards assistance to cover school fees for vulnerable girls, as well as the provision of food and sanitary products for female students.

She called on parents and education stakeholders to help support girls’ education in Eastern Equatoria state

“Our young girls do enroll in great numbers from class one to five and [then] they start dropping in huge number, only for you to realise five or less might have reached standard eight. Is this not a challenge for us parents?” said Alaa.

Among the major contributing factors to high dropout rates among girls is parental neglect, bad cultural practices, financial difficulties and lack of adequate sanitary care.
Many female pupils said their education had also been affected by their parents’ alcohol addiction.

Achiro Regina, a pupil in level four in Magwi primary school, said she often struggled to find the money to buy sanitary products, and that financial difficulty was one of the major stumbling blocks to her pursuit of education and a future career.

Head teacher of Magwi Central primary school Loboi Aldo said there are several challenges in preventing early dropout rates for girls.

He said there was a need for trained female teachers, as well as proper shelter and space that specifically catered for girls.

He has also called for collective efforts among parents, supporting organisation and schools across Eastern Equatoria to help boost education access for girls in the state.

(ST)

Comments on the Sudan Tribune website must abide by the following rules. Contravention of these rules will lead to the user losing their Sudan Tribune account with immediate effect.

- No inciting violence
- No inappropriate or offensive language
- No racism, tribalism or sectarianism
- No inappropriate or derogatory remarks
- No deviation from the topic of the article
- No advertising, spamming or links
- No incomprehensible comments

Due to the unprecedented amount of racist and offensive language on the site, Sudan Tribune tries to vet all comments on the site.

There is now also a limit of 400 words per comment. If you want to express yourself in more detail than this allows, please e-mail your comment as an article to comment@sudantribune.com

Kind regards,

The Sudan Tribune editorial team.

26 June 2014 12:34, by Tong dut

That is a good move, you equatorians are struggle,no body can support you.Keep on and go ahead with federalism for your equatoria.

Thank you E for your advance thing on educating toward Women. I am so proud that you have chosen to take education than war mongrring. Let’s give chances and voice to the girls education because it’s the greatest investment to the better future on stable Equatoria.
Women worth more in class than in koral.

Great news! Equatorians have chosen right pathways to development and prosperity. The Dinka and their cousins Nuer have chosen wrong pathways that end with destruction of lives and properties. The Nuer and Dinka are seeing their daughters, sisters and nieces as hundred of cows and see education as waste of cows which is really a wicket thinking. I have now taken up a fight with my brothers on that

Holding accountable those enabling genocide in Sudan2016-12-05 05:30:49
Eric Reeves
As grim genocide by attrition in Darfur is set to enter its fifteenth year, as Khartoum’s claim of a purely nominal “cease-fire” in South Kordofan is belied by repeated reports of Sudan (...)